Steam Greenlight has traditionally been something of an aberration. It’s a popularity contest for developers that was supposed to ensure the quality of games on Steam. That hasn’t quite worked out, and Greenlight is being replaced by something far more straightforward.
In its place, Valve is introducing Steam Direct; a service that allows developers to publish their games directly to Steam. Interestingly, this change also includes a new publishing fee for the developers. This is supposedly to ensure that the developers are serious about putting out quality content, although Valve has not yet decided on how much this fee will be. The company says that it is looking at something between $100 and $5000.
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Valve doesn’t want to set the barrier of entry too high to avoid deterring less affluent developers, but also wants it high enough to stop the people from publishing shovelware to its platform.
It’s not secret that Steam Greenlight has failed in its efforts to increase the quality of games on Steam. While Valve says that over 100 games that graduated from Greenlight have earned over $1 million, that’s a very small percentage compared to the number of rubbish titles that are being submitted to Steam.
Steam Direct isn’t set to be launched until summer this year, as Valve is still looking for feedback on how to implement it. However, it’s good news that there will be improvements coming to the Steam platform.
[Source: Steam Community]
